Scientists want to put endangered animals in a Noah's Ark on the Moon

 

Scientists have revealed an ambitious plan to put endangered animals on the Moon.

The storage facility would allow us to keep samples of the most at-risk animals species on Earth.

That would allow them to be kept without the risks posed on our own planet, the scientists claim.

That could be a way of keeping a long-lasting record of the animals that we might lose on Earth, the scientists suggest. They will be “cryopreserved” to keep them in a useful state.

In a new article, written by a team led by Mary Hagedorn of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, researchers envision a storage facility built on the lunar surface...more

OK, go ahead and send those animals to Noah's Ark

And send those "scientists" to the belly of the whale, with no three-day limit on their stay.

NASA Is Using Powerful Satellites to Watch Over Endangered Species

By shifting a little focus from space to Earth, NASA is helping ecologists protect endangered species like tigers and elephants with its powerful satellites.

Habitat loss is currently the greatest threat to species on our planet. As human populations explode in number, we are altering more wilderness and using an ever greater share of resources. Larger species, like tigers and elephants, are some of the most vulnerable to extinction.

Once widespread across Asia, tigers (Panthera tigris) have lost a staggering 93 percent of their habitat over the past 150 years. Scientists estimate less than 4,000 of these majestic predators are alive today.

But NASA's satellite data reveals there's cause for hope, identifying suitable habitat for these vital predators, which they were not currently accessing...more

The Endangered Species Act at 50: Still Not Recovering Species After All These Years

Jonathan H. Adler. 

The federal government is celebrating the ESA's 50th anniversary with proclamation's of the Act's success. Yet the celebration is unwarranted. After fifty years, it has become painfully clear that the law does very little to recover species from the brink of extinction, particularly on private land. The law's failure on private land is particularly important because a majority of species rely upon privately owned habitat. Not only does the ESA do little to conserve species on such land, a wealth of empirical evidence has shown the law can do much the opposite. The Act's punitive regulations can actually discourage private land habitat conservation.I survey the Act's "success" in this forthcoming article, "Tarnished Gold: The Endangered Species Act at 50." Here is the abstract:

The ESA is arguably the most powerful and stringent federal environmental law on the books. Yet for all of the Act's force and ambition, it is unclear how mu*ch the law has done much to achieve its central purpose: the conservation of endangered species. The law has been slow to recover listed species and has fostered conflict over land use and scientific determinations that frustrate cooperative conservation efforts. The Article aims to take stock of the ESA's success and failures during its first fifty years, particularly with regard the conservation of species habitat on private land. While the Act authorizes powerful regulatory tools for species conservation, there are serious questions as to whether such tools are the most effective means of conserving species and the habitats on which they rely. Given that most species rely upon private land for their survival, the Act's ability to foster private land conservation is will affect the law's overall success.

In terms of the Act's failure to conserve species, here are a few salient points discussed in the paper.

• The ESA's stated purpose is to "conserve" those species listed as endangered or threatened, and expressly defines conservation of species as bringing populations to the point at which the Act's protections are no longer necessary. Thus, looking at the Act's success (or failure) to recover species is evaluating the Act on its own terms.
• Since Congress enacted the ESA, the number of species listed as threatened or endangered has steadily grown. As of October 2023, there were 2,388 listed animal and plant species, 1,690 of which are present in the United States.
• Since 1973, only 127 species—only 5 percent of listed species—have been delisted. According to the FIsh  Wildlie Service, 32 were delisted because they went extinct and 22 were erroneously listed in the first place. Thus only 73 of the delistings are classified by the FWS as recoveries.
• Of the 73 species listed as recovered, 12 are foreign species, which lie outside of the U.S. government's regulatory jurisdiction, some species were (de)listed more than once (e.g. three separate domestic populations of Humpback whales were listed and delisted separately), and 20 are plants, which are not subject to the same degree of regulatory protection as are endangered animals.
• Of the domestic animal species delisted, several are listed as ESA success stories that either should not have been listed in the first place, or that recovered for reasons other than the ESA' regulatory interventions (e.g. due to exogenous factors or direct acquisition of habitat). Indeed, it is not clear there is a single ESA recovery that can be credited to the ESA's regulation of habitat on private land.

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Lawsuit against US Fish and Wildlife seeks to protect California spotted owls from logging

 

A Northern California environmental group filed a lawsuit Thursday against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its approval of a logging plan that it says could lead to the deaths of hundreds of spotted owls and the birds’ potential extinction.

The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento federal court by the Arcata-based Environmental Protection Information Center, targets the federal agency over a September 2020 permit issued to Sierra Pacific Industries for its plans to conduct logging operations on more than 1.5 million acres of Northern California over a 50-year period.The suit says Fish and Wildlife determined issuing the permit “was not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of northern spotted owls or California spotted owls, or destroy or adversely modify either species’ critical habitat.”

The suit also says Fish and Wildlife authorized the “incidental take” — or death from logging activity — of 115 northern spotted owls and 649 California spotted owls. The northern spotted owl is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and the California spotted owl was proposed for the same classification earlier this year...more

How do you protect two rare birds when one keeps attacking the other?

 

Plans to repopulate Hawaii’s forests with its “very intelligent” crows have been upended in part by its natural predator, the Hawaiian hawk. Now scientists are tracking the hawk in order to save the corvids.

 Amy Durham wound the straps under the wing, over the wing, under the other wing, over the other wing, making sure the backpack-like device stays comfortably strapped to the Hawaiian hawk for many months.

“This may be your best work yet,” said Diego Johnson, one of her colleagues holding the straps on the chocolate-colored hawk’s chest as Durham secured a lightweight GPS transmitter to its back.

These San Diego Zoo researchers are trekking around the mountainous jungles of Hawaii’s Big Island not just to understand the ‘io, one of the state’s only birds of prey, which is considered at risk. It’s crucial, too, for restoring an even more endangered bird species — the ‘alalā, or Hawaiian crow.

Known for its problem-solving abilities, the Hawaiian crow is one of the most remarkable bird species in the world. The ‘alalā, whose name means to “yell” in the local language, is one of the only birds in the world known to naturally use — and even make — its own tools.

Yet this distinctive crow that many dub “very intelligent” has been extinct in the wild for two decades, with the only about 120 alive in human care today.

So far, plans to repopulate Hawaii’s forests with its native crows have been upended in part by the ‘io. The hawks are the crows’ natural predator, and have come after the corvids during prior reintroduction efforts...more                                                       

Feds to explore delisting of Greater Yellowstone and NCDE grizzlies

 

Gov. Greg Gianforte celebrated U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s initial finding while environmentalists cast doubt on the state’s ability to manage the Montana state animal.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday that it is exploring whether grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems are sufficiently recovered to no longer be considered as an endangered species.

The agency’s announcement was welcomed by Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and other Republican officials, who’ve long sought to restore management of grizzly bears to state agencies. Environmental and conservation groups expressed wariness at the development, questioning whether state management would sustain a healthy, stable population of grizzlies and arguing that the USFWS is not meeting the requirements of the Endangered Species Act. 

The agency’s decision was initiated by a trio of delisting petitions submitted to the federal government in recent years, including a 2021 petition the state of Montana filed under Gov. Greg Gianforte’s leadership. The USFWS said two of those petitions presented “substantial information” that NCDE and Yellowstone grizzlies “may qualify as distinct population segments and warrant removal from the federal government’s list of endangered and threatened species.” 

A third petition, seeking the delisting of grizzlies across the Lower 48, did not present “substantial, credible information to warrant further action,” the agency said...more

Environmental rules stoke anger as California lets precious stormwater wash out to sea

 Environmental rules designed to protect imperiled fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have ignited anger among a group of bipartisan lawmakers, who say too much of California's stormwater is being washed out to sea instead of being pumped to reservoirs and aqueducts.

In a series of strongly worded letters, nearly a dozen legislators — many from drought-starved agriculture regions of the Central Valley —have implored state and federal officials to relax environmental pumping restrictions that are limiting the amount of water captured from the delta.

...While the delta provides drinking water for about 27 million Californians and supports the state's massive agricultural industry, it is also a delicate ecosystem that is home to threatened and endangered species — many of which have been suffering amid warming waters, increasing salinity, dangerously low flows and other ecological stressors. The tiny delta smelt are dangerously close to extinction.

State and federal water managers said they have been complying with environmental regulations designed to protect those species, including a so-called "first flush" protocol that mandates two weeks of reduced pumping at the onset of the first big winter storms.

...The first flush protocol stems from biological opinions issued by the Trump administration in 2019 and from incidental take permits issued by the Newsom administration in 2020. Some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, however, are calling for the rules to be revised.

From Jan. 3-16, pumping rates in the delta were reduced to nearly half of their capacity in accordance with the protocol, resulting in a loss of about 84,000 acre-feet of exports from the area, according to estimates from the Public Policy Institute. That's enough water to irrigate 25,000 acres of farmland for a year or supply 150,000 homes...more

 

A Nevada wildflower was declared endangered at the only place it’s known to exist — on a high-desert ridge where a lithium mine is planned to help meet growing demand for electric car batteries, U.S. wildlife officials announced Wednesday.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s formal listing of Tiehm’s buckwheat and its accompanying designation of 910 acres (368 hectares) of critical habitat for the 6-inch-tall (15-centimeter-tall) flower with yellow blooms raises another potential hurdle for President Joe Biden’s “green energy” agenda.

“We find that a threatened species status is not appropriate because the threats are severe and imminent, and Tiehm’s buckwheat is in danger of extinction now, as opposed to likely to become endangered in the future,” the agency said...more

Lawsuit: States Like NM Need to Protect Rare Bird in Oil Country

 

An environmental group is suing U.S. wildlife managers, saying they have failed to protect a rare grouse found in parts of the Midwest that include one of the country’s most prolific areas for oil and gas development.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Center for Biological Diversity says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is nearly five months late in releasing a final rule outlining protections for the lesser prairie chicken.

Once listed as a threatened species, the prarie chicken’s habitat spans parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas — including a portion of the oil-rich Permian Basin that straddles the New Mexico-Texas state line.

Environmentalists have been pushing to reinstate federal protections for years. They consider the species severely threatened, citing lost and fragmented habitat as the result of oil and gas development, livestock grazing, farming and the building of roads and power lines...MORE

Wanted: grizzly bear conflict manager – grappling with bears not required

 If you are fed up of a mundane desk job, aren’t bothered by austere conditions and have an affection for the hirsute, a potentially ideal new role has opened up in Montana: a grizzly bear conflict manager.

For a salary between $79,363 and $103,176, the US government is offering one lucky applicant the chance to spend time in the Montana wilderness, dealing with discord within the world of grizzly bears.

The disputes aren’t between ursine combatants themselves – although territorial quarrels do occur – but in the friction between bears and humans. While grizzly attacks on people are exceptionally rare, farmers can become agitated if a bear preys on livestock, while residents have raised concerns over bears tearing their way into their garbage, seeking tasty morsels.

The job, listed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, involves managing a team of two to four, with tasks including “trapping, chemical immobilization, monitoring, conflict prevention and relocation efforts”...MORE

Are you ready to have officials armed with Artificial Intelligence, eDNA and networked sensors analyze your allotment?

 Artificial intelligence, environmental DNA and networked sensors are among the technologies with the highest potential to improve wildlife conservation, according to recent research.

Published last December by conservation technology network WILDLABS, together with a group of non-profit and academic partners, the report is the first of its kind to provide a holistic assessment of the state of conservation technology.

The researchers surveyed 248 conservationists, technologists and academics across 37 countries over the 11 most commonly used conservation technologies, including camera traps, biologgers, acoustic monitoring and remote sensings. Although It’s estimated that about 8.7 million species populate our planet, 86 percent of all species on land and 91 percent in the oceans are yet to be discovered. Multiple scientific studies suggest that if no action is taken, as many as half of all species could go extinct by the end of the century.

...Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to analyze large amounts of conservation data  such as camera trap, satellite and drone images or audio and video recordings, and improve wildlife identification and monitoring. The non-profit Wild Me created a cloud-based platform Wildbook, which uses computer vision and deep learning algorithms to scan millions of crowdsourced wildlife images to identify species and individual animals based on their unique patterns, including stripes, spots or other defining physical features such as scars.

...The BearID Project is developing a facial recognition software that can be applied to camera trap imagery to identify and monitor brown bears, and inform subsequent conservation measures. This is especially important because camera traps are currently unable to consistently recognize individual bears due to the lack of unique natural markings for certain species.

...AI can also help boost anti-poaching efforts. The software Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security (PAWS) takes in past poaching records and the geographic data of the protected area to predict poachers’ future behavior, and design poaching risk maps and optimal patrol routes for rangers.

Environmental DNA (eDNA), meanwhile, enables conservationists to collect biodiversity data by extracting DNA from environmental samples, such as water, soil, snow or even air. All living organisms leave traces of their DNA in their environments through their feces, skin or hair, amongst others.

A single sample might carry the genetic code of tens or even hundreds of species, and can provide a detailed snapshot of an entire ecosystem...

...eDNA can also help examine the impact of climate change, detect invisible threats such as viruses or bacteria, and assess the overall health of an ecosystem, which can be used to make the case for greater protection for the area.

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ESA’s history: Good intentions, litigious results

Jason Campbell 

Looking back on a century of ranching in the West, one thread that runs unbroken throughout that history is a trend toward ever-increasing—and seemingly unending—environmental regulations. Possibly well intentioned, often costly and always burdensome, laws with acronyms such as NEPA, FLPMA, CWA and a host of others have become familiar to most ranchers over the past five decades. Among these laws, however, none have equaled the impact or unbridled reach of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Originally enacted in 1973, the ESA traces its roots to species preservation laws written in the late 1960s. While these earlier laws established the concept of listing species, the ESA expanded on this by broadening the authority of federal agencies to implement protective measures—including the designation of “critical habitat”—prevented these agencies from jeopardizing the survival of listed species and required they take action to protect imperiled species.

Also buried within the pages of the law was a section titled “citizen suits,” which states that any person or entity may bring a lawsuit in federal court against anyone they allege is violating the ESA, including the government itself. It is this section, perhaps more than any other, that has contributed to the ESA’s transformation into the regulatory juggernaut that it has become.

“I think that when Congress passed the ESA, they envisioned this would be about big, important species,” Wyoming attorney Karen Budd-Falen told WLJ. “There were 10 species that they were really worried about, and that’s what they were focused on.” According to Budd-Falen, who has recently returned to her practice following a two-year appointment with the Department of Interior, it was lawsuits, not legislation, that fundamentally altered the character of the ESA, shifting the focus from preservation to regulation.

“There wasn’t one definitive event,” Budd-Falen said. “The act itself was very simple. But every time there was a court case, the agency would make the documentation bigger and more difficult. Now, in my opinion, the ESA really is off the rails,” she added.

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Interior Department to nix Trump rollback of bird protections

The Biden administration is officially revoking a Trump-era rule that made companies less likely to face penalties for killing migratory birds.

The White House on Wednesday withdrew the changes the Trump administration made to how the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) — a more than 100-year-old law that makes it illegal to kill migratory birds — is implemented.

The Trump administration’s rule removed penalties for “accidental” or “incidental” bird deaths, arguing that it wouldn't be fair to levy penalties in those situations. But it acknowledged even then that the rule could cause companies to forego best practices to limit incidental bird deaths...MORE 

Nearly two dozen species of birds, fish and other wildlife are set to be declared extinct and removed from the endangered species list

The ivory-billed woodpecker, along with 22 other species of birds, fish, mussels and other wildlife, is set to be declared extinct and removed from the endangered species list, US wildlife officials announced Wednesday.

"For the species proposed for delisting today, the protections of the (Endangered Species Act) came too late, with most either extinct, functionally extinct, or in steep decline at the timing of listing," the US Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Also slated for delisting are the Bachman's warbler, two species of freshwater fishes, eight species of Southeastern freshwater mussels and 11 species from Hawaii and the Pacific Islands...MORE 

The effort to save Upper Klamath Lake’s endangered fish before they disappear

 

...Over the past few years, the Klamath Tribes have embarked on a mission to collect c’waam eggs in order to rear them in captivity, something senior fish biologist Alex Gonyaw calls “genetic salvage.” The tribes plan to release a small batch of 3- to 4-year-old fish next spring. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also began raising c’waam and koptu in 2018, but the lack of a substantial overlap between the wild and captive-raised populations could make the recovery difficult. The fish’s historic range has been reduced by 75%, and they need more habitat and better water quality before they can survive on their own.

C’waam and koptu — also known as Lost River and shortnose suckers — were thriving as recently as 70 years ago, supporting tribal fishing families and Klamath Tribes cultural practices. Since then, however, drought, hotter temperatures, dropping water levels and worsening water quality have all increased, threatening the fish’s survival. Given that agriculture, wildlife refuges and endangered coho salmon all need water, too, the Klamath Basin has long been notorious for infighting and litigation among irrigators, tribal nations and the federal and state governments. But this year’s historic drought and the colossal Bootleg Fire have brought more attention to the need for long-term solutions.

...At an inlet called Ball Bay, Jackson slowed the motor as the propellor churned out green water in the boat’s wake. “That’s crazy,” he said. “It doesn’t usually look like this till August.” Squiggles of neon-green filaments bobbed in the water below. Cyanobacteria and blue-green algae appear annually in Upper Klamath; once the algae bloom and die, their decomposition consumes the lake’s oxygen, suffocating the c’waam, koptu and other organisms. The algae also produce microcystins, neurotoxins and possible carcinogens that can’t be boiled or easily filtered out of the water. Swimming in it can cause rashes, and ingesting it can cause kidney failure in humans, and sicken or kill dogs and other animals.

Off the boat’s port side, back on land, a huge pivot sprinkler cast Upper Klamath Lake water over a farm field. The c’waam and koptu’s critical habitat is both a reservoir and runoff receptacle for the Klamath Project, a Bureau of Reclamation irrigation operation that waters 1,200 farms on 240,000 acres of farmland that was once wetland. This year, the farms received almost no water from the project because of drought. Neither did the two national wildlife refuges in the basin, nor the endangered coho salmon downstream in the Klamath River. Now, even domestic wells are beginning to fail.

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U.S. Forest Service Accused of Failing to Protect Meadow Mouse

 

Environmentalists have sued again over an endangered mouse found only in parts of New Mexico and Arizona.

In the latest legal filing, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Maricopa Audubon Society alleges that the U.S. Forest Service has failed to protect the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse and its habitat in the Sacramento Mountains from cattle grazing.

The tiny rodent was listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2014. The agency then designated nearly 22 square miles (57 square kilometers) along about 170 miles (274 kilometers) of streams, ditches and canals as critical habitat in parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona.

Robin Silver with the Center for Biological Diversity told the Carlsbad Current-Argus that grazing is to blame for stream-side meadows being trampled and the mouse disappearing.

“It’s absurd that the Forest Service spends millions in taxpayer money failing to protect the area and stop this slow-motion extinction instead of just removing the cows,” he said...MORE

Did the Forest Service have sufficient budget to address this issue? It would certainly seem so:

Between 2016 and 2019, the Forest Service spent more than $8.4 million on fencing and other projects in the Sacramento Mountains, including along the Agua Chiquita creek, to protect mouse habitat.

The Lincoln National Forest said in a statement that the agency worked to ensure the mouse’s safety by installing permanent pipe and cable fencing near its habitat.

Each mile of fence costs between $137,000 and $227,000, records show.

I simply cannot imagine a fence that cost $227,000 per mile! Sure would eat your budget up quick. 

CBD's agenda is blatantly clear:

Environmentalists are calling on the agency to suspend grazing permits where the violations occur and for the federal government to study the impacts of the activities for future decision making.

Amid Historic Drought, a New Water War in the West

 KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Through the marshlands along the Oregon-California border, the federal government a century ago carved a whole new landscape, draining lakes and channeling rivers to build a farming economy that now supplies alfalfa for dairy cows and potatoes for Frito-Lay chips.

The drawdowns needed to cover the croplands and the impacts on local fish nearing extinction have long been a point of conflict at the Klamath Project, but this year’s historic drought has heightened the stakes, with salmon dying en masse and Oregon’s largest lake draining below critical thresholds for managing fish survival. Hoping to limit the carnage, federal officials have shut the gates that feed the project’s sprawling irrigation system, telling farmers the water that has flowed every year since 1907 will not be available.

Some farmers, furious about water rights and fearing financial ruin, are already organizing a resistance. “Tell Pharaoh let our water feed the Earth,” said a sign erected near the nearly dry irrigation canal that would usually be flowing with water from Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon.

The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the region.

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Lawsuits pile up over endangered species decisions made by Trump administration

The Biden administration is continuing to field lawsuits filed over Endangered Species Act decisions made by the Trump administration. The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Thursday over its failure to provide protections under the Endangered Species Act for 10 species "it admitted needed them," according to the organization. Among the species are the monarch butterfly, which in December the Trump administration decided that adding it to the list of threatened species was "warranted but precluded." This meant that while the monarch butterfly became a candidate for listing as an endangered species, it was not yet listed as the agency prioritizes other candidates...Other species that the lawsuit describe as being left in "regulatory purgatory" are the northern spotted owl, which was found in December to warrant an uplisting from threatened to endangered, and the Eastern gopher tortoise, which has been awaiting protections since 1982... There have been a number of additional lawsuits brought against the federal government since Biden took office. Multiple conservation groups sued the USFWS on March 25 over a decision by the Trump administration to deny the north Oregon coast population of red tree voles protection under the Endangered Species Act...The Center sued the USFWS on March 25 to challenge the Trump administration's downlisting of the American burying beetle from endangered to threatened...Multiple conservation groups sued the USFWS on March 24 for refusing to designate critical habitat for the highly endangered rusty patched bumblebee...The Center sued the USFWS on March 3 for failing to designate critical habitat and develop a recovery plan for Hawaii's threatened 'i'iwi, or "honeycreeper" bird...the Center also filed a notice of intent to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service to make a decision on whether the Oregon coast spring-run chinook salmon warrants protection...MORE

Some green groups oppose lower Snake River dam removal plan

A coalition of 17 environmental groups is speaking out against a key part of a sweeping plan to remove the lower Snake River dams to save salmon and steelhead. The groups said in a letter to Democratic senators in Oregon and Washington that the 35-year moratorium on fish- and dam-related lawsuits included in Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson’s proposal in exchange for dam removal was too high a price to pay, the Idaho Statesman reported Saturday...Simpson last month released his $33 billion legislative concept to breach the dams and mitigate affected industries and communities through a wide range of investments. It includes funding to replace power produced at the dams, to help farmers get wheat and other grains to market, and to help communities like Lewiston. To address what some in the region see as the “slippery slope” of dam removal, the concept includes a 35-year moratorium on ESA, Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act lawsuits on most of the remaining dams in the Columbia River Basin and it would extend federal licenses at those dams for 35 years. It would also set up regional watershed partnerships between agricultural interests, conservation groups and Native American tribes aimed at improving water quality. Farmers participating in the voluntary partnerships would be shielded from Clean Water Act lawsuits for 25 years. Some environmental groups such as the Idaho Conservation League, Trout Unlimited and the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition support Simpson’s proposal. But the congressman has also faced stern criticism from agricultural groups, state legislators and county commissioners from both Idaho and Washington...MORE

Remember that Simpson was the primary mover behind wilderness legislation that included a grazing buyout.  

Real Threats to Threatened Species

 

Paul Driessen

Many activists, politicians and regulators are convinced our Earth and its wild kingdoms are threatened by fossil fuels, conventional farming, modern living standards, and catastrophic climate change resulting from the aforementioned human activities. They promote these fears to gain ever-greater control over energy and economic systems, circumscribe personal freedoms, and silence questions and dissent. 

Few of them could likely hunt, gather or grow sufficient food for their families, or be a lucky protagonist in an episode of the Weather Channel’s Could You Survive? series – much less endure Mary Draper Ingles’ harrowing 800-mile walk through the 1755 wilderness to escape captivity by Shawnee Indians.  

They are strident in their opposition to synthetic herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers, and unbending in their mistaken belief that organic farmers don’t use pesticides – or at least none that aren’t perfectly safe for people and wildlife. They ignore the widespread use of “natural, organic” chemicals like copper sulfate, which is toxic to humans, deadly to fish, harmful to avian and mammalian reproductive systems, poisonous to sheep and chickens, and highly persistent and bioaccumulative in soil and water. 

Their obsession with “dangerous man made climate change” ignores reality. Their computer models run hot, consistently predicting planetary temperatures significantly warmer than are actually measured. The warning they fuss over may have begun around the industrial age, but it also coincides with Earth’s emergence from the 500-year-long Little Ice Age – a completely natural phenomenon. The extreme weather events they blame on fossil fuels and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are not increasing in frequency or intensity. Above all, no credible science supports their claims that today’s weather and climate are entirely human-driven ... and unrelated to the natural processes and fluctuations that caused glacial epochs, warm periods, and extreme weather events and cycles throughout history. 

Their gravest error by far, however, is their insistence that wildlife and their habitats would be saved by eliminating fossil fuel for electricity generation, transportation, heating and cooking. In reality, the biggest threats plants, animals and habitats face are not from climate change. They are from energy policies and programs implemented in the name of stabilizing Earth’s never-stable climate. 

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